The industry has been changing things so rapidly that it's like the computer industry - buy something today, even if it's brand new and packed with all the latest features, and you run the risk of it being somehow "obsolete" tomorrow (or yesterday). What's most important is deciding what you define as obsolete and what features you anticipate needing now and over the years to come.

The 990 wasn't late. It arrived when HDMI v1.3 was a nebulous cloud and HDMI v1.1/v1.2 was a source of confusion and uncertainty that found painfully little hardware support at the time. People already wanted to buy v1.3 gear, even though the standard wasn't adopted and nobody knew what it would include, so most companies didn't adopt HDMI v1.1 audio support. Some provided HDMI ports but limited it to video switching, something that was almost never clearly documented and frequently frustrated consumers. DVI switching gave the 990 an effective way to sustain it in the marketplace for longer than any of its contemporaries, and it did it without the confusion that HDMI video switching frequently caused.

The 997 was late, but the reasons for that seem well-defined by the announcement. The 998 deserves a chance to stand on its own achievements.

Let's assume a pessimistic attitude for a moment and say the 998 is delayed until mid-2011. That would suck, obviously, but is there any reason to anticipate that a unit with HDMI v1.4a inputs, Trinnov, PLIIz, and Dolby Volume would be a dinosaur 15 months from today? Let's even be optimistic and say that the 998 arrives in time for my birthday in October. (Hint, hint, wink, wink, and optimistic to a silly degree...) At that point, even the earliest HDMI v1.4 receivers will only be a few months old and Trinnov will still be extremely unusual. Outlaw will likely want to keep it in production for at least two years and possibly three or more. Will someone who decides to buy a surround processor in March 2012 see the 998's feature set as antiquated? I would say that, while there is probably going to be some new cool technology that will be appearing in Onkyo's latest receivers two years from now that the 998 will lack, a significant number of people won't find that new cool thing to be a big enough deal to drive a purchasing decision. I firmly believe that there is no one product that is right for everyone. The 998 won't change that. Based on the general description found in today's announcement, though, it could be a worthwhile candidate for consideration by a good number of people for a few years to come.